Jean Monnet

Jean Monnet (9 November 1888-16 March 1979) was a French political economist and diplomat.

Biography
Jean Monnet was born in Cognac, France, and he was largely self-educated in economics. He was a civil servant at the Ministry of Commerce from 1915 to 1919, a consultant economist to the Versailles conference from 1918 to 1919, and Deputy General Secretary to the League of Nations from 1919 to 1923. In World War II, he worked in the British Supply Council in Washington DC before joining Charles de Gaulle in Algiers to co-found the French Committee of National Liberation in 1943, where he was in charge of developing a plan for economic recoveryi n a liberated France. The Monnet Plan, in operation from 1947 to 1953, nationalized industries such as Renault and Air France, but otherwise directed the economy very much in cooperation with private industry. A close colleague of Robert Schuman, he worked out the economic details of the Schuman Plan, which gave birth to the European Coal and Steel Community, whose first president he became from 1952 to 1955. For the rest of his life, he was a strong proponent of further European integration.